I have been pressing Camden Council to step in and prevent the closure of Albany Street Post Office, also in today's Daily Mirror "Mandy Post Office Shuts." Here's the letter I wrote to the Lib Dem/Tory leadership, normally very active on Post Office issues in the borough, to ask if our lawyers could step in to injuct the Post Office Ltd not to close until a suitable replacement was foun...

Labour’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, James Purnell, has announced that the Post Office has been awarded the contract to continue providing the Post Office Card Account (POCA). The Labour Government has taken the decision to help secure a viable Post Office network by awarding the five-year contract directly to the Post Office. Four million people, including two million pensione...

The Guardian has news of Labour’s further inconsistency in their plans for the Post Office network: Lord Mandelson is urging the prime minister to save the Post Office network by allowing it to provide government services and financial products, according to a leaked letter seen by the Guardian. Mandelson suggests that the current economic downturn and “recent

The split at the very heart of the Labour Party over the Post Office looks like it might be spilling out on to the Labour blogs that can eeasily be influenced. Take for example this very long blog post by Kerry McCarthy, MP for Bristol East. The entire post reads like a briefing paper written by someone like Peter Mandelson or one of his SpAds. The headings of the post look suspiciously lieka cut ...

The Labour Party is in revolt this morning over proposed part-privatisation of the Post Office, complicated by news that the pension fund is apparently in crisis, and by signals that, if Labour MPs don’t vote for the Labour Government’s proposals, Tories and Lib Dems will. Now, I’ve written before that I’m agnostic on Post Office privatisation; I’ve always been econom...

Labour MPs and unions are to build on their political triumph yesterday in persuading the government to let the Post Office retain the £1bn post office card account by demanding that a forthcoming review of the Royal Mail does not lead to further break-up. James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, delighted MPs by announcing that he was scrapping the two-year-old tendering process ...

Green-controlled Stroud Town Council is celebrating an against-the-odds victory, after sealing a deal to reopen a post office closed under the government's Network Change programme. Stroud is the first authority to intervene successfully to rescue a stand-alone post office, and only the second to save any post office counter. Meanwhile, around 2,500 other branches are expected to have been lo...

Labour AM Ann Jones has congratulated Henllan Post Office for its successful application to the new Post Office Diversification Fund. The Post Office is one of the first to be awarded part of a new £4.5m fund to help sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses diversify and improve their facility. The fund, which will run for three years and is open to every sub post office in Wales, aims to help...

One third of the Welsh post office network in Wales axed under Labour.

The Post Office network of over 11,500 branches plays a unique and valued role in communities up and down the country. Over the last decade two closure programmes saw the loss of 5,000 post offices - losses which are still keenly felt by the communities they affected - but which failed to address the real challenges the network faces.